An unofficial Croydon, Sutton and Surrey Green Party blog by Shasha Khan. Having lived in Croydon most of my life, I now live just outside the south west of the borough in Woodmansterne.

Friday, February 22, 2013

Barwell loves a fat cat

Full page of this weeks Croydon Guardian

Cutting of the letter in the Croydon Guardian

I hear that Croydon Central MP, Gavin Barwell, is good constituency MP. To retain this marginal seat, he will need to persuade flip-flopping voters within the constituency that this trumps the fact that he is a Conservative through and through. This is why I was surprised to see his defence of Lord Harris and Harris academies. If he really thought £243,000 is a fair salary, why not actually put the value in his letter. By not doing so, his defence of Harris academies appears like a defence of Tory donor.

Dear Editor,

MP Gavin Barwell’s response to my letter has let the cat, or
rather the fat cat, out the bag. I think he is misguided if he thinks readers
find it acceptable that a director of the Harris Foundation, which runs three
schools in Croydon, pays themselves £243,000 a year of public money, at a time
when supplementary schools, aiding struggling pupils, face funding cuts. He
forgets that when the vast majority of schools in Croydon become academies, the
intake of schools run by Harris will not be as academically gifted. This is
because other academies will attempt to poach bright kids through covert
selection, just like Harris is able to do. In that instance, if Harris Schools
end up in failing, neither the council nor the government can do a thing about
how much Harris bosses get paid.

Alternatively, Mr Barwell’s defence of fat cat pay levels
could be due to the fact that Lord Harris, the founder of Harris schools, is an
influential donor, to the tune of £2million, to the Tory party.